AHMM, June 2005

by Dell Magazine Authors

  When the police were otherwise occupied, I ducked beneath the thin barrier and sloshed unnoticed through the mud into the heavily forested center of the park.

  Cold blobs of rainwater whizzed past the brim of my fedora and spattered my cheeks. My work may not pay much but I earn enough to afford a coat and a tie and a freshly pressed white shirt to wear to work every day. I refuse to dress like a peasant, even though nowadays millionaires and movie stars dress as if they're twenty pesos away from their last bowl of frijoles refritos. I wiped away the droplets, pulled up the collar of my trench coat, and kept sloshing forward through the mud.

  Twenty minutes ago, I'd received a phone call at Flaco's Bar and Grill in East L.A. The time was ten P.M. The caller was Esmeralda Peña, a cousin of mine, a woman I'd grown up with and a woman who'd been like a sister to me. Ezzy was frantic. Her daughter hadn't come home and Ezzy had been sitting by the phone for three hours. Waiting. Juanita had been working after school, Ezzy told me, at some sort of folklorico dance troupe. Even in her nearly hysterical state, Ezzy couldn't help bragging about Juanita.

  "She's doing the choreography herself."

  Juanita was a good student—straight As—and Ezzy wasn't bashful about flashing Juanita's report card. College scholarships had already been offered during this, Juanita's senior year at Lincoln High School. Rehearsals for the dance troupe were held at El Teatro Azteca, a church-sponsored project for underprivileged youth that sits in the center of El Cinco de Mayo Park, just a few blocks from Flaco's Bar and Grill.

  I told Ezzy to calm down, it was probably nothing.

  "But she never does this,” Ezzy told me. “She always calls."

  "Maybe the rain's holding her up."

  "Gonzo, by your mother's sainted grave, are you going to help me or not?"

  That was Ezzy. Get right to the point. And she wasn't above using guilt trips.

  "Of course, corazón,” I said. “Cómo no?” How not?

  "Now, Gonzo,” Ezzy said.

  "Now,” I agreed.

  She thanked me and made me swear that I'd call her as soon as I knew something. I promised I would.

  About thirty yards inside the park, another yellow tape had been looped around the trunks of palm trees. An arroyo as wide as a delivery truck, secluded by heavy shrubbery and hanging leaves, led down to a cement drainage ditch gurgling with runoff. For the moment, the rain had stopped. Blue-smocked technicians crammed the area and someone had set up flood lamps so the entire scene had the eerie quality of a carnival blanketed in fog.

  A voice bellowed behind me. “Freeze!"

  I turned and gazed into the barrel of a.45 hovering between clenched fingers. Staring at the pitiless black pit of the gun, I attempted a smile. I raised both my hands above my head, keeping my eyes on the.45 as it lowered. Behind the gun was a familiar face.

  Black curly hair streaked with gray, a nose that would've been straight if it hadn't been broken a couple of times, a sad mouth, and brown eyes that looked as if they'd been tired since the day the world was created. Pale complexion. His thin body stood ramrod straight, so straight that he appeared to be bending backwards.

  Lieutenant Ruben Portillo, LAPD. A stalwart on the force. A legend in the barrio. The first amongst us ever to make good in the Machiavellian bureaucracy of the Los Angeles Police Department.

  "Gonzo?” Portillo asked. “What are you doing here?"

  He recognized me because of the time I'd spent on the force, a few years ago.

  I lowered my hands and straightened my soggy coat. The rain had slowed now but still fell in fat drops. Drooping palm leaves reached out for us, like the fingers of giant carnivorous plants.

  Portillo holstered his gun. “I'm busy, Gonzo. Talk to me."

  I explained what I was doing here, speaking in rapid Spanish. I'm not sure why. English comes more naturally to me. Maybe I was afraid other cops would be listening. Maybe I was afraid that speaking my fears in English would make them more official. More real.

  As I spoke, Portillo nodded his head slowly. He had a way about him. A way of listening that made you feel that he was doing more than just listening. He was absorbing you—everything about you. Absorbing your pain and your fears and your uncertainties, making them his. That's why, maybe, he looked so sad. And that's why he was such a good cop. Even criminals spilled their guts to him.

  Listening to my story, Portillo seemed to grow tired. Exhausted, really. As if he'd just been to hell, tarried a while, and then clawed his way back to the land of the living.

  "You've been drinking again, haven't you, Gonzo?” he asked.

  I nodded my head.

  "Good,” he said. “Maybe it will help."

  Then he motioned with his open palm toward the gurgling gully and the glare of the floodlights.

  "This way, Señor Gonzales."

  * * * *

  I shaded my eyes from the light of the hot bulbs. Lieutenant Portillo and I stood on the edge of the arroyo leading into the storm drain. The mouth of the cement-reinforced flood tunnel was covered by sturdy steel bars, a couple of them sawed through and bent, making an opening big enough for a kid to squeeze through.

  Drug dealers. When cops cruise the park, young boys are paid to haul the valuable packets of heroin or cocaine or designer drugs down into the drainage tunnel. I'd been in them before—years ago when I was too young to know better, when I thought entering them was adventurous and fun. Foul places. Full of dead cats and rotted dogs and squeaking vermin.

  No cop in his right mind would follow a kid down there. Not even for a drug bust.

  I was stalling. Letting my thoughts be drawn to something other than the central focus of everyone's attention. Whatever they were interested in, it lay beneath a clump of thick shrubs. One of the technicians methodically tied the shrub branches back with electrical wire, clearing a space so the other technicians could work. Men in blue smocks and plastic gloves and face masks used large tweezers to pick objects off the ground and drop them into numbered plastic bags. Another technician held a clipboard and marked things down as his coworkers mumbled.

  The only thing I saw was a pair of feet.

  They were small and well formed with flecks of pink polish smeared on the toenails. What was strange about the feet was the string of bells. Tiny spherical bells, made of copper or tin, looped around one ankle by three strands of red-, white-, and green-colored twine.

  I had already told Lieutenant Portillo that I was worried this victim might be my niece. In Anglo custom, my cousin's daughter would be considered my second cousin. That seems cold to us Chicanos. Our cousins are like our brothers and sisters and their children are like our nieces or nephews. But since my mother died, I'd been practically adopted by Ezzy and her mother. I'd been present at every stage in the life of Juanita Maria Silva. At her birth, at her baptism, at her Communion, at every one of her birthday celebrations. So I called Juanita mi hija, my daughter. Portillo, being a Chicano, accepted the convoluted reference without comment.

  I squatted on my haunches and squinted into the glare of the floodlights.

  Portillo tapped me on the shoulder.

  "What do you think, Gonzo?"

  "Too many technicians in the way. And the shrubs."

  "We'll move them."

  He gave orders for the technicians to back off. Still, I couldn't see clearly. The man who had wired the shrub branches jerked on his bundle of wires until the entire shrub rose to its full height and then bent over backward like a circus contortionist.

  Now I could see the body.

  She was a young woman, in her late teens, on her way to full adulthood, but she looked small and helpless lying there on her back in the cold mud.

  The outfit she wore was bizarre. Full of ropes and tassels and a short deerskin skirt and a beaded breastplate made of a thousand interwoven colors. I realized that the design of the beads was the sun rising. Triumphant. Her hair was long and black and although matted and glued into clumps by the mud, still straight
er than I remembered it; as if she'd paid for a special hairstyle for this occasion. Crumpled beneath her hair was the broken quill of a purple plume. I recognized it. The quetzal bird. Sacred to the ancient Mexicans.

  Was it real? Couldn't be. Must be a cheap reproduction.

  Then I realized what the getup was all about. The folklorico dance troupe. She was dressed up like an Aztec princess.

  Her face was grimaced in pain, distorting her unblemished features. Her teeth were straight and pearly white, but it appeared that her molars had been ground so hard that I half expected to see enamel dust dribbling down the side of her cheek.

  Around her neck was a straight rope, of the type you can buy in any hardware store. Except it was cut to about a three-foot length and wooden handles had been knotted into the ends and the entire contraption had been skillfully looped over the head and around the neck of this unmoving Aztec princess. Her throat was lined with rope burns. One on top of the other, each one growing progressively more red and raw until the final one lay right beneath her jawbone. Vertical lines scarred the rope burns, creating a tic-tac-toe effect. So she had fought. She had pulled on the rope. Scratching off lines of her own flesh in her frenzy to breathe.

  Her hands hovered on either side of her jaw, the fingers bent like the talons of a hawk ready to grab a hare.

  The eyes were shut. Maybe one of the technicians had closed the lids. I was thankful for that. She couldn't witness all of us crude men hovering above her defenseless corpse.

  There was a long silence. The technicians didn't move. Neither did Portillo. From the other side of El Cinco de Mayo Park, an occasional hoot of derision from the crowd of gawkers drifted across the wide expanse of lawn.

  I thought of the Juanita I had known.

  An enchanting young woman. Stunning, actually. Taller than most Chicanas, with lush black hair that rose from her high forehead and then fell back to just below her shoulders. Her face was oval shaped. Regal. The nose was slightly pointed and the eyes gleaming black and full of evaluative fury. The role of an Aztec princess would come naturally to her. She could do anything and be anything. She had the brains, she had the beauty, she had the drive. And she was using those gifts. She was acting as most adults wished they had acted in high school. With purpose. With the full knowledge that a free education is the greatest gift our society bestows.

  The thought that Juanita was now gone was more than upsetting, it was maddening. I tried to push the rage out of my mind. I had to regain my balance. I needed to concentrate only on what was before me and be professional. I needed to absorb every detail of the murder scene and keep those details locked in my memory so that one day I could stand before the man who'd murdered Juanita Maria Silva and look him in the eye and watch him squirm before I reached out and strangled him with my bare hands.

  Gently, Portillo tapped his long fingers on my shoulder.

  "Gonzo?"

  I looked up.

  "Do you recognize her, Gonzo?"

  His voice seemed far away. With an effort, I pulled myself back to the living.

  "Yes,” I said. “Her name is Juana Maria Silva. Juanita, we called her, since she was a baby."

  "Your niece?"

  I stood up, looked at Portillo, and nodded.

  He closed his heavily lidded eyes for a moment.

  "Lo siento,” he said finally. I'm sorry.

  * * * *

  For two days, our misery had been complete.

  Now, on the morning after a sleepless night, Esmeralda Peña sat in her front room on the plush red couch embroidered with lavender orchids. She neither looked up nor spoke as I approached. I slid in beside her and took her hands in mine. They were cold. Bonier than I remembered. Ezzy jerked them away.

  Finally, Ezzy spoke. “Lieutenant Portillo says Juanita was killed by Henry Carranza."

  "I know,” I said, as gently as I could.

  "I don't believe it."

  I patted her hand. “Portillo's a good cop."

  "Maybe,” she answered. “But this time he's wrong."

  I didn't respond and Ezzy seemed too exhausted to argue. She shrugged her shoulders and said, “There's a pot of albóndigas in the kitchen.” Her voice was dry. “You'll have to heat the corn tortillas yourself."

  Suddenly I realized that for the first time in two days I was hungry. I rose from the couch, entered the kitchen, and turned on a small gas flame beneath the pot of meatball soup. I also turned on another low flame beneath a flat metal pan, flopped two tortillas atop it, and stood watching steam slowly begin to rise off the surface of the soup.

  While the albóndigas simmered, I went to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror, studying the red-veined eyes. The scene of Juanita lying dead in that muddy ditch flashed into my mind, but somehow I managed to fend off the memory. On the way back, I stopped in front of Juanita's room. Without thinking, I reached in and switched on the light. Maybe it was a former cop's instinct, but almost involuntarily I found myself taking inventory.

  One bed, covered by a hand-woven Indian blanket. Posters of Latino rock stars, books on physics and chemistry, a glowing green portrait of the Virgin of Guadalupe. And there, covering one entire wall of Juanita's room, a giant, full-color photograph of the Aztec Calendar Stone.

  I made my search as methodical as I could, starting on the north wall of Juanita's room and working my way counterclockwise, rummaging through drawers, thumbing through magazines. As I worked, I saw evidence that someone had been here before me. When I finished a complete circuit, I searched under the mattress and under the bed.

  Nothing.

  The closet was a little more of a challenge. Rollerblades, an old lacrosse stick, a photo album of a trip Juanita had taken to visit some relatives in Culiacán, in the Mexican state of Sinaloa. It was in the toe of an old hiking boot that I found it.

  Money.

  A roll of twenties, tens, and fives. Tightly bound by a rubber band. And a small notebook. Pocket size. The kind a traveling salesman would use to keep track of expenses. Rows of numbers, letters, more numbers. Nothing that made sense.

  Quickly, I counted the money. Over five hundred bucks.

  Juanita didn't have a job—she was too devoted to her studies and to her extracurricular activities to worry about money—and therefore, she had no legal way of amassing this small fortune in old bills. Where had it come from? For the moment, the money would be safe here. I stuffed it back in the toe of the boot. The notebook, I kept.

  Smoke from burnt corn invaded my nostrils. I ran back to Ezzy's kitchen.

  The albóndigas was boiling over and my two corn tortillas were smoking. Without singeing my fingers, I managed to pull the hot corn wafers off the red pan and toss them into the sink where I ran cold water over them. Then I switched off all fires and watched as the bubbles subsided in the red soup.

  What the hell. I wasn't hungry anyway.

  Ezzy didn't stir when I sat back down next to her. Silence filled the room. Finally, she said, “Did you eat?"

  I told her I had.

  "Good.” Then she sat up straight on the couch, thrusting her hair back, her eyes moist and sober. She stared directly at me.

  "Ask me the questions, Gonzo."

  "The questions? What do you mean, Ezzy?"

  "The questions. You know, like on TV. When the innocent young girl's been murdered and the detective wants to find out who did it."

  With that, her face crinkled and almost broke again. Somehow, she managed to regain her composure. I still wasn't sure exactly what she meant, so I asked.

  "You mean the questions like Lieutenant Portillo asked you?"

  She nodded. “Like that."

  "They're painful, Ezzy. Are you sure you want to go through them again?"

  "Yes. I want to be certain to tell everything. Not to leave anything out. Not to forget some important fact that could lead to the cabrón who killed Juanita."

  I studied her. She was serious. Very serious.

  "You let Por
tillo search Juanita's room?"

  She nodded. “He told me it might help."

  I stared into Ezzy's eyes. “Are you sure you want to do this?"

  "I'm sure. You were a cop once, Gonzo. Go ahead. Ask."

  I started with the routine list. Who were Juanita's friends? Who were her enemies? Who would've wanted to kill her?

  Ezzy answered like all mothers do. Juanita had a lot of friends, no enemies, and no one would've wanted to kill her.

  I kept probing.

  Juanita was a cheerleader at school and on the honor roll and a member of the student government. Certainly any underachiever, which included most of the kids at Lincoln High, would've resented Juanita's accomplishments. Some of them might've even wanted to use violence.

  Ezzy flatly denied this. “Everybody loved her,” she claimed.

  I sighed. Still, I kept asking questions about Juanita's personal life and Ezzy finally rebelled.

  "What's the point of all this, Gonzo?"

  "The more a detective knows about Juanita, the more likely he is to capture her killer."

  "But why would her life have anything to do with it? She was killed by a maniac, wasn't she? Dragged out in the park behind bushes.” Ezzy's trembling hand reached to cover her eyes and once again she started to cry. Her voice rose to an hysterical pitch. “A sex maniac."

  I pulled her hands away and wiped her eyes with the back of my knuckles.

  "No, Ezzy. Couldn't be."

  "Why not?"

  "Juanita wasn't raped."

  "You're sure?"

  "The cops are sure. Didn't Portillo tell you?"

  "Maybe he did. I was so upset."

  Before I left El Cinco de Mayo Park, Lieutenant Portillo had filled me in on what he'd known so far. Which wasn't much. The autopsy report would make the final conclusion, but their preliminary investigation had excluded any sexual activity on Juanita's part prior to her death.

  Esmeralda stared at a dust mote floating near the roof. For a moment, I thought she'd left me. Then her lips moved.

  "You found the money?” Ezzy asked.